Arquivos de Posts

Modding my precious Dreamcast!

Yesterday I performed a feat that's reason of pride and joy.

Completely by myself – guided by instructions from different sources – I managed to mod my American Sega Dreamcast in order to play Japanese and European games. In Brazilian Portuguese, the modding process is commonly known as “destravamento”, and in Brazil mostly often it serves the sad and sole purpose of playing bootleg games.

The modding process for the Dreamcast consists of including a chip in the BIOS circuitry, adding up to 9 soldering points: 5 in the chip itself and 4 in the console board. After I opened the equipment, I got a little terrified of what I was gonna do. Such tiny legs in the chip, and such delicate points in the video-game board to be soldered... In the end everything turned up fine, as you can see in the last picture of the image sampling below, the opening titles of the Japanese shoot'em up Chaos Field.

Photos are crappy because they were taken using my cell phone. The batteries for my camera were dead...
1. My precious getting ready to lose its virginity
2. My "work of art" on the mod chip (yeah, awkward soldering position on the right side, I know)
3. Open dreamcast with all soldering accomplished, just waiting for the reassembly
4. Chaos Field in all its glory, with no boot disk and no region-block message!

This was my first modding ever, as melting the American SNES lids to play Japanese games doesn't count. After fearing that I would ruin my Dreamcast and have to buy another one, I now think it wasn't that hard at all... I'm very proud of myself, for my next acquisitions in the Dreamcast journey will be taken with no reservations and will involve the likes of Ikaruga, Psyvariar 2 and Under Defeat, among others.

In case you guys wondered why I switched to writing in English, just bear in mind that all my texts regarding games will from now on be written in this language. Nobody ever posts replies, so I might as well give myself some writing practice.

Text posted by Kollision on May 8th, 2008